The issue of standards testing in Manitoba’s public schools has a complicated recent history. After years with no tests, the Department of Education had started to use them again in a limited way. But, they have become a contentious political issue and the Department is now beginning to retreat from its policy.
For the most part, standards provincial testing as a key component of evaluation in Manitoba’s public schools disappeared more than 30 years ago. Only a remnant of the former regime remained; in the early part of the 1990’s, Grade 12 students wrote province-wide exams in only one subject per year, and the marks they obtained counted for only 30% of their final grade .